


Where You're Planted

by artifactstorageroom3_archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artifactstorageroom3_archivist/pseuds/artifactstorageroom3_archivist
Summary: Jim and Blair’s daughter thinks about her family as she writes out her Father’s Day card.** sequel to Beds of Roses





	Where You're Planted

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** This story is a sequel to "Beds of Roses" and is set about three years after that fic. You will be seriously confused if you haven't read that first. Also, you probably won't care about this fic if you haven't read that one first.
> 
> This fic was written in response to sentinel_thurs challenge #306 - "Father's Day"  
> I had four sequel ideas pop to mind with this evil, evil prompt, so I randomly picked one to actually write.

 

Talasi carefully drew her pen across the interior of the card that was sitting on the table in front of her. It would be virtually impossible to replace it should she make a mistake, and that would definitely be a shame seems how she had carefully preserved the thing since June.

A laugh from across the restaurant distracted her from her writing. There was a large family sitting in the corner. From the looks of them it appeared like a father and mother with two grade school aged children. The older gentleman was obviously a grandfather, most likely on the paternal side given the resemblance he bore to the younger man sitting at the table. There was also an older girl. She appeared to be either high school or college aged and bore no resemblance to the mother of the group. Logic dictated that she was either the younger ‘second family' sibling to the father, or his daughter from an earlier relationship.

A pang of jealousy curled through Tala as she watched them, and she instantly did her best to squash the feeling. Her fathers loved her dearly. She had no business wishing for a larger family structure, especially when she could have so easily remained floating around in foster care until she came of age.

Shaking her head, she focused again on the card and smiled slightly as she signed her name in one color of ink then another and another all precisely on top of each other. It made for a pretty presentation, one that would drive her papa crazy as he tried to focus on it.

 The waiter came by to clear some dishes off of the table and looked confused as he caught the "Happy Father's Day" that was emblazoned on the card. Tala merely smiled serenely at his confused expression, and he wandered off without saying anything. 

Sometimes people irritated her with their nosiness. Dad said it was just a symptom of being a teenager. Papa said that it was just good sense, and she should use it whenever any boys came around.

The two of them seemed so opposite in nature it was a wonder that they had been together so long. The first year that she'd been with them, she thought that she'd fallen off the edge of the earth or something. Herbal remedies and bickering about panthers and wolves and... Well to a six-year-old it had teetered between being a fascinating fairy tale and just utterly confusing.

They hadn't celebrated Father's Day that first year. The ties of family just simply hadn't been there yet. Back then it had been "Terry" and "Henry." When the next year had rolled around, they'd celebrated in the traditional month of June, and had kept that tradition for three years. Then, when she turned ten, she'd come home one day complaining about not fitting in, about not being normal, about being a half breed, and how life generally sucked when you're different.

Papa had been sympathetic. Dad had gone through the roof ranting and raving about how his child could be falling into the pitfalls of societal norms and how the next thing he knew she'd be trying to hide the fact that she had two fathers instead of the socially acceptable mother and father combination.

Not that her fathers knew that she'd overheard that particular diatribe. They hadn't noticed that the noise generator was broken at the time.

But the consequences of that little tirade made themselves apparent the next day when  her dad had announced that they were going to pick a holiday to celebrate in the style of another country so that she could have a more global perspective in her life. She distinctly recalled whining and stomping off to her room in response. She also recalled the squabble that her parents had gotten into after she slammed her bedroom door.

They so rarely fought, and it hurt that she was the one causing their disagreement. Papa was on her side arguing about how difficult life was, and Dad had been adamant that she had to grow up without preset prejudices.

In the end, she couldn't stand listening to them fight anymore, so she'd chosen Father's Day as the sacrificial holiday, certain that it would irk her dad. It hadn't. It really hadn't because, as he so nicely pointed out, she was going to have to remember to give her Papa a card three months after all the other fathers got theirs.

 She had never once forgotten, and had made it a point to put the card in her carryon when she was packing for her trip. Not that Papa had wanted her to go anywhere near Cascade. No sir, his baby girl could just stay away from there as far as he was concerned. She was too young. It was too far. It was _Cascade._

She could quote her dad's response to that one, "Yeah, and she looks so much like us that somebody is gonna notice?"

Tilting her head to one side she pondered the significance of being in Cascade. It was her papa's territory, and she wasn't as foolish as to not notice how secure she'd felt when her group had disembarked from the plane. It felt more like home than Iowa ever had, and she wondered at the strength of will that her papa had to stay away.

Which wasn't to say that she was comfortable with that realization; even after over a year of knowing the ‘truth,' it was hard to think of her parents in the terms of "Blair" and "Jim" instead of "Terry" and "Henry." It was even harder to be in ‘their' city, and realize the impact that the two of them had had there. She'd held her breath when her group had toured Rainier. Her dad's portrait had been hung prominently in the hall of ‘famous' alumni. As the other girls had tittered over how handsome he was she'd stood there quaking in her boots worrying that they'd recognize him as nerdy, old Professor Everstone.

They hadn't.

She was really glad that they weren't going to tour the Cascade Police Department because for all she knew her papa's picture would be hanging there.

"You doing okay?"

The words broke into Tala's musings, and she smiled and nodded in Mrs. Nelson's direction. She was a kindly woman, and Tala was lucky to have been assigned to her chaperon group instead of Mrs. Moore's. The other female chaperon had some choice words to say about Henry Everstone, and most of them revolved around him being a faggot. The rest revolved around how she was sure he was running his business illegally because nobody could be that good.

It was mostly sour grapes on her part. When her papa had first moved to their town, he'd worked for Mr. Moore as a business analyst. He'd been so good at his job that soon people were requesting him specifically. Then her papa had found out that the other analysts were getting paid more than he was.

So he'd broken off his relationship with Mr. Moore and struck out on his own as a freelance consultant. Moore had tried to undermine his efforts, but no amount of political smearing could outweigh the fact that Henry Everstone was pure magic at making your business run better. He could find crooked employees, and people swore that he could literally hear when a machine wasn't performing correctly. 

Then he'd founded his own consulting firm that specialized in improving businesses with environmentally friendly processes that benefitted the bottom line as well as the earth. As a result, Henry Everstone was rather well off man, and Mr. Moore was a very bitter one.

"Gracious, child, I swear your mind goes off at a moment's notice," Mrs. Nelson tutted when she realized that her charge's attention had wandered again.

"I'm just introspective is all."

"Like the professor. Dear man is always thinking about something. You're your father's daughter, even if you aren't related."

Tala smiled at the compliment. Her dark hair, dark skin, and dark eyes pronounced to the world quite readily that she wasn't genetically related to either of her fathers, but it was nice to know that she resembled them in other ways.

It was ironic that she'd been named because of the color of her eyes. She'd been born to a teenage mother who was all of fifteen. As far as she could discern from the letter that she'd been given, her mother was a complete ditz. Shocked that her child's eyes were blue when she was born, she'd named her after the Native American word for cornflower because her father was a Native American. She hadn't realized that most babies were born that way. 

Her biological father's letter had been much more... sane. He'd explained how he was only sixteen and couldn't handle having a child. He'd said how he was sorry he was such a coward about it, but that he couldn't bring himself to tell his parents about her. He wished her the best of lives and hoped for her every happiness.

She liked to think that she'd taken after her fathers. All three of them.

"I'm lucky to have Dad. He's the one that talked Papa into letting me come with. Especially with it being, ‘Right at the beginning of the school year,'" Tala responded before Mrs. Nelson could chide her again for her wandering attention.

"You're a lucky girl to have both of them; I don't care what that old windbag over there says." Mrs. Nelson informed her.

Tala laughed and glanced over in Mrs. Moore's direction. The other woman was currently apologizing to the family that Tala had been eyeing earlier. One of her charges had launched a spoonful of mashed potatoes at one of the other teenagers in the group and had managed to miss said other teenager and hit the older gentleman sitting at the table behind them.

Curious, Tala cautiously turned her hearing up so that she could eavesdrop on their conversation.

"You don't need to get so upset about it." Mrs. Moore was lecturing the older man.

"Upset? My father-in-law is wearing another person's lunch, and you expect us to not be upset?" The mother cut in, her Australian accent rolling clearly through the restaurant.

"They're just children." Mrs. Moore was stammering now.

"And as such they should learn manners. Especially at their age," the grandfather spoke for himself this time, his tone one of a man who was used to others obeying his command.

"I'm just saying..."

"I should certainly hope that you're saying that you are sorry for the interruption that this has caused our family. I flew my granddaughter in for Father's Day, and plane tickets aren't cheap you know," the older man interrupted her.

"Father's Day? That was back in June!" Mrs. Moore scoffed.

Inwardly, Tala winced. The woman truly had no tact.

"It isn't where I come from, and how or where my family chooses to celebrate a holiday is none of your business. You are thoroughly insulting and suffer from a most severe lack of manners." The mother's voice was the epitome of quiet and deadly. Where the grandfather's approached had failed, hers succeeded.

Tala dialed her hearing back as Mrs. Moore began to spout apologies, but she stopped when the name given for the offered dry cleaning was "Ellison." Turning up her eyesight in place of her hearing, she focused in on the elderly gentleman. Traces of her papa were easy to see in the older man's features, and her earlier feelings of jealousy returned full force. The people that should be her family were right there. All she had to do was walk up to them and open her mouth, but she couldn't. She dare not risk herself or her fathers. 

Summoning her inner will, she looked away from the scene, focused solely on the almost forgotten card in her hands, and reminded herself that she had all the family that she needed.


End file.
